Although Sybase Inc sees a bright future for its data warehousing business, it’s still hasn’t come up with its promised online analytical processing (OLAP) database. Sybase was expected to introduce its OLAP product, codenamed Highgate, in July (CI No 2,956); it’s now likely to be announced in the fourth quarter. In the meantime, Sybase data warehouse chief Joshua Bersin was happy to point out the kinks in Oracle Corp and Informix Corp’s OLAP strategies. Bersin said Oracle Express isn’t really a database but a 20-year-old mainframe programming language. Of Informix Meta Cube, he added: They’re out to lunch, Meta Cube is a non-player and said Informix was taking a Frankenstein approach by trying to integrate it into their database engine. The OLAP market is still an extremely immature market, Bersin said, presumably to explain why we won’t see Highgate until 1997. But back to Sybase’s data warehouse strategy check list. First, it has almost 300 people working on data warehouse-only products and projects and eight dedicated product marketing people. Second, it has identified data warehousing as one of three core areas, alongside Internet-enabled client-server applications and distributed computing. Third, the coming year will also see Sybase spend about one-third of its enterprise business group marketing budget on data warehousing. And with good reason; Sybase admits it hasn’t done a good job explaining to its users who it is and where it’s going. We need to get out of the marketing hole, because the truth is we can be profitable, Bersin said. Sybase had to re-camp after reporting losses of $25m on sales of $250m and laying off about 10% of its 6,100-strong workforce as well as dump non-core products (CI No 2,954). Bersin explained: We were a $1.2bn company with a $1.5bn infrastructure and bureaucracy. Its bundling arrangements (see top story) illustrate how it’s saving resources by partnering rather than building; it dumped its Silo meta data integration project and now bundles Carleton Passport tools instead. Meanwhile, Sybase has completed its sales force restructure, which it planned to implement in 1997, but moved ahead one year. Sybase now has a grid structure with both vertical market divisions and product areas. The vertical segments are financial services, telecommunications; state and local government; oil and gas; and health care. Sybase called the move a dramatic reorganization.
